GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT will be 36% quicker than the GeForce GTX 280 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 50304 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be much (more or less 84%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40640 (84%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a lot (about 54%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10336 (54%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.